Love it or Hate it: 1983 Cadillac Seville.

There are so many cars out there with a cult following these days, that I often find myself wondering if all the weird cars in the automotive world have a place to “belong”.  Do people really like these oddball cars? Or do they get stuck with them and learn to love them?  I have very strong affection for a many of the ugliest, most backwards, slowest, and terribly designed cars in existence.  I bet I’m not alone.

For today we have a 1983 Cadillac Seville. These had amazing oil leaks V8 engines that sat way too far forward in the engine compartment because they were front wheel drive.  The weight distribution felt like it was 98% on the front wheels and 2% over the rears.  Luckily the power steering pumps could power a small city so turning those overloaded front wheels was easily done with your finger tip.  The interior was chock full of switches, hundreds of them.  Switches in the dash for everything imaginable, switches on the sides of the seats, the doors, the roof, the glove box, and if I recall correctly, the sun visors had switches as well.  Nobody knows what all those switches did, but if you wanted to turn anything from off to on, you could do it successfully in this car. Cigarette lighters? Yeap, there were enough of them for you and 80 of your closest friends to have a smoke.  As a kid, I enjoyed putting dimes in the lighter holes, sadly, the US didn’t mint enough dimes to stuff into every lighter hole in these cars.  The trunk; “Hey GM designers, what the heck went on there?”

My opinion: If it were rear wheel drive, I would love it because of its weird looks, and gangster soul. However, being front wheel drive with the worst weight distribution in history, I am leaning on the hate meter for this one.

What’s your opinion?

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Jeremy Nutt

Hi, I'm Jeremy.

6 thoughts to “Love it or Hate it: 1983 Cadillac Seville.”

  1. I like it. I like the styling. The utility of this FWD config may not be that great, but I am not talking about championship racing here. I’m talking about tooling down the road on cruise control going to grandmas house, or slinking over to the Copa Cabana for a lobster and martini. You don’t really need high skid pad Gs for that.

    Then of course, I have to bring it on the boulevard at night to collect my money.

  2. Never been a Cadillac man…if I were going to buy such a garish monstrosity, I’d go for something with more panache, like a Bentley. Of course, none of the land barges (of any make) ever really appealed to me that much to begin with.

  3. The engines were full of bad decisions on mis-matched materials used in the engine, the heads were not very reliable for the long haul, the AT was costly to repair, but the styling was unique with the “dropped back” look which was copied by the other car companies.Smooth on the road with a soft ride quality. Use of lots of plastic makes them look “bad” after 20 years of even good TLC.

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